I just returned from captioning two weeks’ worth of onsite conferences. It was great! Mostly.

Sadly, onsite events have become almost extinct during the pandemic, and most everyone is very eager to get back to the old ways of being. AV crews, production companies, organizers, venues, caterers, taxis have all been suffering during the downtimes.

It was so nice in the past couple of weeks to see old friends and make new ones. In fact, it was exhilarating! I had forgotten how to pack. I’d forgotten which of my many cases fit in which airplanes. I’d forgotten what some of those dongles and wires were even for!

Did I even remember how to do my job onsite?

I learned that yes! Yes, I did. (Mostly, anyway.)

The first was a week full of back-to-back related-but-separate tech conferences – vaccine required, masks required. All efforts possible were taken to mitigate risk. And it was a truly sweet and wonderful crowd.

It was an odd feeling to be back onsite. We’ve all forgotten how to be around other people – and crowds especially – but we were all trying our best to be human again. The awkward, “do we hug? Do we elbow-bump? Do we fist-bump? Do we just avoid everyone altogether?” How do we eat? Where do we stand?

It was pretty awesome.

The airports and airplanes and trains and ferries and taxis still had mask mandates in place then. Yay. My flight was very short, but was delayed seven hours. I was hanging out in the airport all that time. I ate and drank briefly with my mask down, but there were barely any people around. Flights were being canceled that week by the hundreds and thousands, so rather than take the chance that would happen again on the way home, I took the Amtrak train home. It was a 9-hour ride. The car I was in was only sparsely populated, and everyone was masked. I felt safe. It was a calm and comfortable ride. I could read quietly. I had no seatmates to bug me, I could spread out my legs, and there were no big talkers or screaming kids in the carriage. I decided I was going to take this option more often, when available. Even though it takes much longer (when things go right with the planes), it was so much more pleasant.

But when I got home, I was sick. I tested negative for Covid repeatedly throughout the next week, and I recovered fairly quickly. I don’t know what it was – a cold, or a new Covid variant that did not show up on the at-home antigen test – but I lost a few days’ worth of productivity.

And then, not yet fully recovered (though I recovered relatively quickly), I had to get ready for the next away conference.

The second conference was also as well thought out as possible: Proof of vaccine required.

Masks….

re…

quired?

Hm. Well, I thought they were going to be. But, well… not so much, as it turns out. I was one of only probably 10 people (at most) who kept their mask on for the duration. Still, I felt quite safe. The hotel was uncrowded. There was plenty of space, very high ceilings. A fully vaccinated crowd. And in the event space itself, there was plenty of room for people to keep their distance.

Now, though, as of yesterday, all the mask mandates for public transport have been lifted by a Florida judge. Some members of my team are immunocompromised. Some have very young children who can’t be vaccinated yet. Some just plain don’t want to risk getting sick and losing productivity for several days after a trip.

Yes, they can wear their own masks. But we know that many members of the public are taking no precautions, believe the pandemic is a hoax, and are refusing to participate in any public health measures to protect others. In addition, some people are harassing and intimidating those who wear masks. My team and I are legitimately anxious and concerned about travel.

And then, there is the business perspective. This is important. We always lose at least one day of productivity on either side of an away trip. Those of us who love to travel (me among them!) have always felt, pre-pandemic, that that was worth it. We don’t charge clients for those lost travel days, because clients already think captioning is expensive enough, and it’s a business decision I made early on and stuck with. We want to be there. We want to provide the service. We have fun on the trips. We compromise in order to be a part of it, to get out there, to be seen and build relationships and build the business.

But now we have all the other stuff to deal with: Many unmasked people = increased health risks. Canceled flights all over the place. Long delays. Very possibly not even making it to the event on time. Very possibly not being able to leave on time. If we can’t leave on time, someone has to pay for the extra hotel nights that might be required – and that means me – unless we have built into the contract that the client will pay.

The potential costs to my little boutique company are huge. Our captioners are booked back to back to back. We can’t afford to have them stuck in airports for indeterminate amounts of time on either end. We can’t afford to have them come home sick. We don’t have the flexibility to sub someone else in on little or no notice. We are not an on-demand resource just sitting and waiting for jobs to come along. We are an extremely small, finite, highly specialized resource, tightly booked, much-needed, in very high demand.

So, as much as we all pine for the Before Times, it is now the After Times or maybe (hopefully) the Between Times.

I’ve made the decision that, with very few exceptions, White Coat Captioning will provide remote captioning only, unless your event is within driving distance of one of our team members, and unless your event is fully masked and fully vaccinated. If and when this nation finds its brain and its logic again, gets its transportation system back in reasonable order, and cares about and protects public health again, we’ll be thrilled to come back to your event in person.

In the meantime, we do remote captioning all day, every day, all around the world, to rave reviews from our clients and audiences.

Your AV team will have to provide us good, clear audio, and figure out a way to show us the slides in real time. It can be done. We will caption our little fingers and ears off for you, highly accurately, with almost no delay, no matter where you are. You can take pride in the fact that you have added great value and more accessibility to your event. At the end of the day, you will have provided the top-of-the-line, very best, highly accurate human-produced realtime captioning service available in the world.

I hope that someday soon we’ll see you in person again.